Sang Froid
by petite etoile22
Summary: Wes knows Ros will tell him the truth about his father's death; she won't spare his feeling because she hasn't any of her own.


_**Author's Note:** A strange little one-shot that came about when I was watching 'Let The Right One In'._

_**Disclaimer:** I do not own Spooks, it belongs to BBC and Kudos productions._

* * *

"_Go where we may - rest where we will, Eternal London haunts us still."_

* * *

She's standing at his front door, and he vaguely recalls her from some childhood memory of his. The key word being 'recall', as she looks exactly the same. Where an old woman should be, merely stands her. He stares at her for several moments, Reason fighting for control of his mind; the woman before him is merely a relative of this long-distant memory.

"May I come in?" she asks, her question forcing him from his reverie.

"Of course, I'm so sorry. Come in."

She steps over the threshold with a quirk of the eyebrow and a slight smile. It is only then that he realises that he doesn't know her name; a stranger is in his home. That fact doesn't scare him as much as it should, and some small part of his mind keeps on insisting that she isn't a stranger. Her scent is familiar; almost like an old family photograph. It's hers, and yet it predates her at the same time.

"You smell like my mother," he murmurs softly to himself.

The strange woman spins round and looks at him sharply. For an instant, he almost suspects that she heard him even though she's on the other side of the living room whilst he's still at the front door, lost in his past.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she demands.

"You look like someone my father knew. His name was Adam Carter."

He sees the grief flash briefly across her eyes and before Logic can rear its ugly head, he is hit by another memory; she cried after the wake. She'd stood at the bottom of the garden, unaware of his hiding place, and cried. Uncle Harry took her away, speaking to her in a low, soft voice.

_"Ros..."_

He doesn't realise he's been thinking aloud until she's stood before him, her nose millimetres from his. This close, he notices there's something beneath his mother's scent; blood.

"You're her, aren't you? I don't know how to explain it but you're Ros."

"You should've become a spy," Ros observes dryly.

They shake hands and he tries not to shiver from her touch.

"Shouldn't you be older?"

"You're very...observant," she replies in response to his question. Wes can't help but feel nine years old again in her presence.

"I've just celebrated my 50th with my friends and family. Jo looks remarkably good for her age, but even she looks older after forty years."

"I get older, I just don't grow old."

"You mean you'll always look the same. What happened to you?"

"Do you want the truth?"

"That would be helpful," he retorts, knowing he'll have to take this 'truth' with a giant pinch of salt.

Ros procures a hip flask from the depths of her black overcoat, and takes a long sip. When she smiles, it is the lack of elongated canines that unnerves Wes more than the crimson blood spilling over her pale lips. She is more human than he gave her credit for.

"There's no point getting ready to hunt if you're not going to hunt," she states in answer to his unspoken question. "But you wanted to know what happened to me. The answer is, I don't know. I just remember feeling this enormous sense of loss, and then I woke up one day drenched in blood, the door to my cell broken off its hinges. Then waking ceased to matter, along with pain, sleeping, and eating. I couldn't even have a cup of tea for the shock." Ros laughs softly then, making Wes assume it's some private spy joke.

"So you're a vampire then?" he asks in disbelief, grateful that his wife is treating herself to a spa weekend.

"A hematophage, to be more precise. You eat meat and plants for sustenance, I drink blood."

"Why are you here?"

"I thought you might appreciate being alive for another day or two."

Wes finds that he does appreciate being alive, he just doesn't appreciate they way Ros goes about ensuring that is the case. There are only so many vocal cords one can stuff into bin liners before it gets tiresome. He enters the kitchen to find a man suspended from the light fitting, his blood methodically dripping into a petrol can.

"You're leaving."

Ros has taught him that he no longer has to ask stupid questions. In exchange for learning that lesson, she tolerates his penchant for stating the bloody obvious.

"I'm leaving," she whispers, never once pausing in her travel preparations.

"Why?"

"You're a big boy now, you can take care of yourself. Besides, your wife gets home tomorrow. I doubt she'll appreciate the presence of another woman in her house."

"Where will you go?"

"Norway, probably. They've just started their six months of darkness. I'm in the mood to learn a new language. If ever you need help..."

"I'll be in touch... You loved him."

"No. I didn't love your father. I cared for him deeply, but I couldn't love him." Ros runs her fingers through her hair, and for a moment, it seems as if the forty years have finally caught up with her. "And I couldn't now, even if I wanted to."

"How did he die?" he blurts out, decades of curiosity coming to a head. He knows Ros will tell him the truth; she won't spare his feelings because she hasn't any of her own.

"He was caught up in a car bomb. It was quick, and there was nothing anyone could do. No one could've survived it. Not even me. Not even now."

Her voice is muted as she lowers the cadaver onto the polythene sheet she has laid out. She wraps the body quickly and efficently, before draping it over one shoulder and heading out the door with the container full of blood. Wes follows her out, and stands there shivering as she loads the boot of the car.

"Go back inside Wes, it's cold and you haven't got a coat on."

"I'm not a child."

But she looks at him as if that's all he is, and all he can ever be. Perhaps she is right; in her mind, he will always be nothing more than a child because when she was alive, she had seen things to give grown men nightmares. He doubts much has changed since she stopped living, but carried on existing.

"Goodbye, Ros."

She doesn't reply.

She doesn't reply until much later, when at 92 years of age, Wes is lying on his death bed surrounded by his friends and greatly extended family. She looks old enough to be his grand-daughter. He takes her hand and smiles, enjoying the fact that this woman before him is helping his childhood spring to life before his very eyes.

"Did you visit the others when they were like this?"

"Yes. Harry said he never realised I was so resourceful, and Jo wanted to know the name of my surgeon."

Wes chuckles softly. "It'll be daylight soon."

"Not for a while," she whispers softly, her eyes so dark a shade of green that they appear black.

William Carter dies peacefully in his sleep. In between his companions leaving and the ambulance arriving, Rosalind Myers also exits, wiping a sliver of blood from her chin.

When she closes her eyes, she sees them all and the countless others whose lives intersected with theirs; their presence a comforting one, rather than a haunting one.

Ghosts are not afraid of other ghosts.

Their blood gives her sustenance.

Their memories help her survive.


End file.
